


My Brother Taught Me To Skip Rocks

by kattaratta



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: autistic papyrus is implied, honestly if u wanna know everything im having pap deal with here ask me on my tumblr, hoo hoo uh there'll be more character tags later, its kinda lowkey but hey its my fanfic ill shove whatever i want into it, like i dont even think i should be adding sans atm, papyrus with anxiety is also HIGHKEY implied
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:16:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7293568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattaratta/pseuds/kattaratta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Papyrus wouldn't talk about how he felt if his life depended on it, even though some would argue that it did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Brother Taught Me To Skip Rocks

**Author's Note:**

> WHO WANTS TO SEE PAPYRUS HATE HIMSELF!!!!! yall apparently... so uh basically papyrus hates himself and this is a fic about it. because i like analyzing the infant
> 
> alsO this is gonna be no mercy --> neutral (which i wont go much into) --> pacifist god im sorry i shoulda made sure i had everything before posting

      He didn't have many friends. He tried to make more, but people didn't seem to like him on instinct, like they did his brother -- even if Sans didn't call them all his _"friends",_ he was still more likeable than Papyrus and had more people who considered _him_ their friend -- nor did they seem to warm up to him after talking for a while. Was he too loud? Too excitable? What was _wrong_ with him? Day after day spent alone patrolling Snowdin, one or two people (three, if he was lucky -- his record was six!) greeting him with a halfhearted “hey”, none greeting him by name. Everyone greeting Sans with an enthusiastic “hi, Sans!” “what’s up, Sans?” or something or another. And Papyrus hardly even got a “hello” out of anyone.

 

      He was jealous of his brother. And he hated himself for it. It wasn’t Sans’s fault that he was more popular and likeable; he shouldn’t be jealous. He shouldn’t be. Even if he had a better personality, more friends, more talents. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t be jealous. He had no right to be. When someone was better than you-- no, better at something than you (he was trying to get better at the whole self-loathing thing)... you shouldn’t be jealous. You should just try harder so you can be just as great as them, right? Right!

 

      ...But still, Papyrus only had three people who liked him even remotely -- Sans, Undyne, and Flowey. His brother, his boss (sort of; she was supposed to be training him for the royal guard and just kind of... wasn't?), and a flower. Someone who was obligated to like him, someone who was obligated to at least _pretend_ to like him, and a plant. It was… pitiful, to say the least. But they were good friends, even if Sans didn’t do much and didn’t really share Papyrus’s interests. Even if Undyne was too… intense, would be a good word, he supposed, and didn’t ever hold back. Even if Flowey never really seemed to understand how he was feeling.

 

      He wanted more people to like him. He wanted more friends. He wanted to be _loved._ How could he get that, though? His personality just didn’t garner love or attention. He was _loud,_ sure, but that didn’t make friends. He had long ago hoped getting a place in the royal guard would help him -- _everyone_ loved the royal guard, right? They were made to protect, and people loved that sense of security. People practically _worshipped_ Undyne, and she was the head. Everyone loved the guard, so if Papyrus was in the guard, people would love _him,_ yes? It seemed logical. But that would never happen if he wasn't being trained. Undyne was putting it off. Procrastinating. She was a good friend, Papyrus kept telling himself, and there must be a reason. She _has_ to have a reason.

 

      Sans told him he was great. He was likeable. He was cool. “The coolest,” he'd say. “The coolest monster in the whole Underground. People would be honored to be your friend.”

 

      Papyrus believed it, most of the time.

 

      Then there were the days he was so unmotivated to leave his room that he had to remind himself that he had to get Sans up, had to keep up with his post in Snowdin, had to get reports to Undyne, had to keep up with his favorite television shows. Small, silly things sometimes got him up, like “if you don’t get up, then Sans will have to deal with that pest of a dog taking all your attacks, and you don’t know if he’d be able to do that because he’s a lazybones and doesn’t know how to properly take them from the dog like you do”. Or the overly upbeat robot on TV that he and so many adored (and once in a while he wondered if Mettaton felt the same as he did; using positivity as a mask -- but that was impossible, right?) putting out a new movie that he just _had_ to see.

 

      But sometimes, getting motivated was harder than other times. Some days, he wanted to sink into the sheets and evaporate. He wanted to stop existing, never have existed, not have anyone miss him if he were gone. Three people missing him was too many -- heck, _one_ was. But he didn’t want to _die,_ persay. Just… not exist, maybe. Never have been born. Not be dead, but not have ever been alive. That sounded about right.

 

      He couldn’t tell anyone. The only person he’d ever told was Flowey, and that was only on one of the really hard days when he needed someone to turn to, and only because he knew Flowey wouldn’t be terribly… empathetic. He couldn’t tell Undyne -- she’d feel terrible -- and if he told Sans, it would break his heart, and he couldn’t do that to him. He just couldn’t. He would feel terrible. Sans had a hard enough time without that. He didn’t want to make it harder for Sans to smile -- he knew he was already having a difficult enough time with that.

 

      Papyrus knew that to stop from the lack of motivation to rise again, he had to stay up. Don’t let himself fall. Don’t lower. Keep moving. Keep going. Don’t stop. He can’t stop. Stopping meant falling -- drowning. In bed, at night, his head swam with those awful thoughts. Thoughts about how he was a worthless little thing -- a burden to those he loved even without telling them how he was feeling. The fact he felt this way was bad enough. It was times like that he just wanted to sink into the sheets and let them engulf him, like when Sans had taught him how to skip rocks and Papyrus’s just kept sinking to the bottom without a single bounce. That’s how that felt. In fact, his days reminded him of rock skipping; the gentle _tik tik tik_ on the water when the rock went till it couldn’t anymore. That was him. The skipping rock. And the water below him was filled with giant, scary things with big, sharp teeth and intent to kill.

  
      When he was tired or scared or anxious or sad or angry or god forbid _overloading,_ that was when the _tik tik_ s started to… slow down, he supposed. Except it felt like it was speeding up. So fast he was skidding across the surface of the water. So fast he could cut through the water and slip under at any second. Good feelings sometimes sped it up, too, but in a good way -- in a way that made it bounce further faster instead of skidding. But he could never stop the bouncing or the skidding. If it stopped, he would sink into the water -- sink into the sheets. And then he’d be stuck at the bottom.

**Author's Note:**

> its multi chapter :^) also im gonna have joke chapter titles for comedic relief forgive me


End file.
